Cruise Question: Love of learning through planning and purpose

This week's question: "How do you instill a love of learning in your child?" (Click on the ship to see more responses--they will be posted on Tuesday.)

Thoughts as I repost this: "How do you instill a love of learning in your child?" Seems that's all I've been posting about lately. But as we get to the end of an enjoyable school day which included, among other things, a field trip to the back yard for violet and crow observation; an impromptu game of Twenty Questions in response to a geography lesson about Kinds Of Things; several pages of Kim; a spelling lesson where we learned that the "friendly vowel suffix" has a bad habit of running off with the consonant from the first syllable (causing us to have to double the consonant to protect the short vowel); and an imitation of the Hairstyling Skills Competition using Barbie beauty heads...some of which "educational activities" were planned, and some of which weren't...I think we're getting closer to actually FINDING that pot-of-loving-learning-gold that sometimes seems the elusive prize for getting through many days of math drills and history lessons on dead kings. Anyway, the girls' school day is done but they're now making stationery in the kitchen (their idea), using coffee to age the paper, giving me a few minutes here to browse for "love of learning" in past posts--and this almost five-year-old post is what I came up with.


Repost from 2005: A Response to Laura D. Bush

There’s an article online that's been reprinted here and there, called “It’s Not About School,” by Laura D. Bush. Since I first read it, a couple of points from the article have been bothering me and, at the risk of seeming rude or maybe out of date (the article is five ten years old), I would like to address them.

Overall, I think Mrs. Bush does have something important to say: that the “heart of homeschooling is in the home we build for our children.” As someone who started homeschooling with Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s For the Children’s Sake fresh in my mind, I agree very much with that point! And I would like very much to think that any family that reads together, that talks about important things (including how those things fit into God’s world) around the dinner table, and that learns to wonder and find out about what that big bug is or how things work, is going to be a learning family no matter what curriculum is chosen; maybe even no matter what school the children attend. I notice, for instance, that theologian Francis Schaeffer’s children (including Susan) and grandchildren were not exclusively homeschooled, although some Christians insist that homeschooling is the only Scriptural choice parents can make.

However, I have to take exception to her criticism that much talk of “books and lesson plans, classical homeschooling and unit studies....obscures the heart of homeschooling” and becomes just an enjoyable hobby of “playing school.” When Mr. Fixit reads the Wheels section of the paper and posts to a station wagon e-group, I don’t call it “playing car”; he enjoys cars, but he’s also taking care of our transportation needs. I enjoy talking about homeschooling and childrens’ books, but I’m also taking care of my family’s school needs. I am the one trying to read between the lines in product reviews, going to workshops, and joining online math groups. I don’t plan everything we do from scratch, but I am responsible for choosing which plan we will follow, which books we will study, and figuring out our longterm academic goals.

If I didn’t do those things and told my children that because the heart of homeschooling is a loving home, I’m not going to spend any extra time working out what we’ll study next school year, they would (rightly) look at me as if I had two heads. Homeschooling is no more just a hobby for them than it is for me; it is how they spend a good part of their days; it means, to some extent, their futures; and it is important that they understand how seriously I do take that responsibility.

To be fair to Mrs. Bush, I don’t think that her purpose in writing was to discourage anyone from comparing curriculum or enjoying “shop talk.” (Even the Proverbs 31 woman considered a field before she bought it.) However, she does tend to wander into the rather romantic ideal that a supportive, literate household will automatically produce educated children. She states that “no child in a home with books and magazines and the welcoming lap of a reading adult will fail to learn to read”; actually, I know at least one child in exactly such a household who has had great difficulty with reading. “No child in a healthy home will fail to learn all the arithmetic he or she needs to succeed as an adult.” Unschoolers may agree with that idea, but for most children (including mine), regular math work is necessary in addition to all the “teachable moments” and real-life learning we’ve made use of. (Cutting pies into fractions goes only so far.) “Homes full of love for one another, love of learning, interest in and concern for the world will almost surely produce well-educated young people, regardless of the methods or materials we choose to use in our homeschool.” Sewing a dress or cooking a meal using wrong methods and poor materials will result in failure, regardless of the good intentions of the sewer or cook; why should the teaching of children be viewed differently?

It’s true that God’s people can have widely varying needs in education, and some families may find they need to supplement their very full “real life” with only small amounts of “school.” Others will need to spend much more time and energy providing learning opportunities for their children. My concern is that, while we can agree with the “heart of homeschooling” philosophy and don’t put prideful over-emphasis on academic achivement, we risk creating a reverse tendency to sneer at method and structure, as if they are somehow less than spiritual. (I think that reflects the same spiritual tension that causes some people to view savings accounts and insurance as prudent, and others to say they show lack of faith in God’s provision.) The “love of learning” Mrs. Bush describes does not happen, for most of us, without at least some deliberate plan and purpose.

Critical Thinking's Balance Benders (TOS Review)

Treehouse Review Week

This has been a pretty quiet "Review Week" so far--I have some new products, but we're not quite ready to post about all of them yet.

Here's one we've been using for the last couple of weeks:

Balance Benders from The Critical Thinking Co.

When I heard that the Review Crew would get to try out products from Critical Thinking, I didn't know if we'd get math, logic or something more unexpected. Balance Benders is kind of all three. We were sent the Beginning Level, aimed at grades 2-6; there are three more difficult levels covering grades 4-12+, 6-12+, and 8-12+. (That's typical of Critical Thinking's books--many of them come in several levels but get more challenging within each book.)

What I discovered is that these are what our family has always called "yogurt cup problems." This dates way back to The Apprentice's first year using Miquon Math, when I rigged up a balance made from yogurt cups. The idea was to play around with combinations of Cuisenaire rods and small objects, learning concepts such as "what you do to one side, you have to do to the other." Our balance never did work perfectly, but it was enough to get the point across, and the name has stuck. In the Miquon series you also get worksheets that show combinations of balls and cubes; you have to figure out things like if one big ball equals four small balls, and one cube equals two big balls, how many small balls would that be?

These are the same sorts of things. Each page has an illustration of a balance holding various combinations of shapes--maybe a square, a triangle and a circle on one side, and two squares and a triangle on the other. (Just for an easy example--there's an actual sample here.) You have to choose which of several statements would always be true about the equation that's illustrated--for example, that a circle equals a square. It's good practice in deductive reasoning, and it's also--at this level--sort of a pre-pre-algebra. Here's a sample from Level 3, for comparison.

Third grader Crayons--who, as I said, has had some Miquon and "yogurt cup" practice with this sort of puzzle--whizzed through about the first twelve pages (of about forty practice pages--the rest are solutions), and then noticed that the questions started to get a bit harder. I don't know if she'd rate these as totally "fun"--she's at a stage where "challenging" doesn't always equal "fun"--but I think they're worthwhile, if only to give her a different kind of math activity (that she doesn't see as math). I think they'd be helpful for elementary students (or maybe older ones, using the higher levels) who are a bit burned out on numbers but who wouldn't be as intimidated by shapes. Since we're not finished the book yet, I'm not sure whether she'll be able to handle the whole thing this year or whether it will start to get a bit beyond her. [UPDATE: Crayons finished the book in late spring, doing a couple of pages a week. The end of the book wasn't a whole lot more difficult than the beginning, at least not beyond mid-elementary capabilities.]

Final Take: An interesting addition to a math program, and not too expensive.

The price: US$9.99 each.

Dewey's Disclaimer: We received this product free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.

Math Mammoth (TOS Review)

Treehouse Review Week

Math Mammoth Home Page
Free Samples Download
Placement Tests
FAQ (including ordering information)

"Fully reproducible math workbooks
and worktexts for grades 1-12.
Incredibly affordable!"
I mentioned a few weeks ago that we would be trying out Maria Miller's Math Mammoth series with Crayons this term. We received both grade 3 books in the Light Blue Series (more specifics on the grade 3 books here), and I printed out the first chapter.

"The first chapter in this book deals with addition and subtraction strategies. The student does a lot of mental math, learns addition and subtraction terminology, touches on algebraic problems in the lesson about addition/subtraction connection, practices borrowing, and more."

What else do you do in Grade 3? "Then we tackle the multiplication concept in chapter 2. After that come multiplication tables in chapter 3, so multiplication does take a big part of book A. Then comes a chapter about clock and time (chapter 4) and a chapter about money (chapter 5).

"In part B, we study place value with thousands (chapter 6), then measuring and geometry (chapters 7 and 8), followed by division in chapter 9. In chapter 10, we study a little about multiplying bigger numbers, and finally in chapter 11, it is time for some introductory fraction and decimal topics."

Why do I like this so far? As I've said before, I like the three-year curriculum we've been using with Crayons, but in its final year it does get a bit esoteric with Fibonacci numbers, measurement, and graphing concepts--and I've felt that she really did need more work this year on basics. I wanted to be sure that those arithmetic "acorns" she'd stored up didn't get buried under a lot of other leaves and nuts--nice leaves and nuts, but not what she most needs right now.

It might be that Timmy-Tiptoes part of being a Squirrel: dropping those nuts down deep through the hole in the tree, but not being sure exactly what went down there, or how you're going to get them out again later.--previous Treehouse post

I also like the balance we're getting between a bit of "mom teaching time" and then a reasonable amount of problems for Crayons to do alone--this works very well with the way we like to learn here, and seems to go at about the right pace. I like the uncluttered feeling I get when we work through these pages--they're not fancy, but they offer enough variety to keep things interesting, and include self-checking activities like finding all the answers in a long line of numerals. (If the answer isn't in there, you did it wrong.)

"When you use these books as your only or main mathematics curriculum, they can be like a "framework", but you do have some liberty in organizing the study schedule....This curriculum aims to concentrate on a few major topics at a time and study them in depth....This is opposite to the continually spiraling step-by-step curricula in which each lesson typically is about a different topic from the previous or next lesson, and includes a lot of review problems from past topics. This does not mean that your child wouldn't need occasional review. However, when each major topic is presented in its own chapter, this gives you more freedom to plan the course of study and choose the review times yourself."

This works for us.

An important question for our family: do you need a colour printer? In the third-grade workbooks I downloaded, the colours do make the pages prettier; but they also seem to work fine in black and white. If you're looking for material for younger children, you might want to check out the samples for those years to see if you want them done in colour. [Update, October 2010: We printed out the 3B book in colour because it has several chapters about geometry, measurement etc. which use pictures of rulers, measuring cups and other things that show up better with different colours.]

What is Math Mammoth like in general?

Math Mammoth offers a whole array of downloadable workbooks, from full curriculum, to collections of worksheets on single topics. At first the different series may seem confusing, but the website pretty much explains the differences, for example, between the Blue and the Light Blue books. The Blue series is more remedial or supplemental; Light Blue is designed as a full, largely self-teaching curriculum for grades 1-5.

What is there for older students? Very glad you asked: check out the middle-school and high-school stuff here, including the Make-It-Real series of workbooks. "Make It Real Learning products are workbooks that contain activities or problem situations taken from real-life, with real data. Some examples of the situations are: cell phone plans, autism, population growth, cooking, borrowing money, credit cards, life spans, music downloads, etc. etc. Each activity-lesson starts with basics and goes into more in-depth and challenging evaluations and questions."

What does this cost? It all depends on how much you want to get at one time. You can get the whole Light Blue series, for example--that is, all five grades plus answer keys, a worksheet maker etc.--for US$99 as a download or $104 on CD. Prices of one year's Light Blue curriculum (including the support materials) vary slightly between the Math Mammoth page (it says there they are $29.50) and the Kagi store download page (it's listed there as $33.36). You can also order printed workbooks through Lulu.com. General ordering information is here.

Final Take: Over the past few years, I've often noticed Math Mammoth's generosity in offering samples and prizes (I've won a couple of their other products myself), and their interest in working with homeschoolers. I think it's their flexibility that seems to make them a good choice for homeschooling--you can get what you need to start with, get more pages or more help if you need it, and even make up some of your own stuff with the support materials. There is no fancy encryption or stuff that makes printing limited or difficult. And the book we're using has been pretty much print-out-and-use--there's no big learning curve for the parent. I don't know how the materials for the upper years compare to other curricula, but I'd certainly include them in the possibilities for math in the years to come.

Dewey's Disclaimer: This product was received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.

Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting (TOS Review)

Today, January 23rd, is National Handwriting Day.

Do you enjoy writing by hand?


We have been reviewing three products from Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting.

But let's go back for a minute to a turn-of-the-last-century couple named Bridges. Robert Bridges was a poet laureate. Mary Monica Waterhouse Bridges (otherwise known as M.M. Bridges) was an expert calligrapher who wrote A New Handwriting For Teachers. You can read some of her notes and see images from her book on the Ambleside Online website.

Charlotte Mason appreciated what "Mrs. Bridges" was trying to do in both simplifying and beautifying the handwriting that children were being taught:

"A 'New Handwriting.'--Some years ago I heard of a lady who was elaborating, by means of the study of old Italian and other manuscripts, a 'system of beautiful handwriting' which could be taught to children. I waited patiently, though not without some urgency, for the production of this new kind of 'copy-book.' The need for such an effort was very great, for the distinctly commonplace writing taught from existing copy-books, however painstaking and legible, cannot but have a rather vulgarising effect both on the writer and the reader of such manuscript. At last the lady, Mrs Robert Bridges, has succeeded in her tedious and difficult undertaking, and this book for teachers will enable them to teach their pupils a style of writing which is pleasant to acquire because it is beautiful to behold. It is surprising how quickly young children, even those already confirmed in 'ugly' writing, take to this 'new handwriting.'"--From Home Education (Volume 1) by Charlotte Mason, pages 236-238.

Although I know there are many styles and systems of handwriting out there, and that several of them have worked well for CM homeschoolers, this is the first one that has appealed to me enough to want to take it on with one of my children, and the first one I've seen that seems to have both the sense of "beauty" that Charlotte Mason wanted, along with an acceptably contemporary style. That may sound funny considering that the Barchowsky style is less "loopy" than even my school-taught cursive, but a simpler style can have its own gracefulness. And who's to say that every letter in a word has to be hooked up to every other letter? (The Barchowsky method suggests a break after every four or five letters, to increase legibility.) There are a lot of handwriting ideas that I've taken for granted ever since my own school days, but they're not necessarily the only way to do things.

Years ago, The Apprentice tried out an italic system of printing; her handwriting still shows the scuff marks of that battle. Since then the Squirrelings' copywork has been rendered in their version of Mama Squirrel's best "painstaking and legible" fifth-grade-style cursive. For actual handwriting instruction, we've used a very standard workbook series and some online freebies. Still, our results have been something short of "beautiful," especially outside of handwriting lessons.

But it was time to try again.

I have to say that Barchowsky isn't an open-the-book-and-teach program. And what makes it especially difficult to start a whole new handwriting system is that most of us already write some other form of cursive--so when you're first checking out the program, you're having to retrain your own brain as well as figure out what your student is going to do. At first it seems that there are no set lessons--it's designed that way so that it can be useful to students of all ages and be used at your own pace, which makes it flexible but a bit confusing at first. The teacher has to do some homework ahead of time; but there are ways to get started without too much pain--see below.
We received all three Barchowsky products, and at first I wasn't sure what to do with the BIG package of wipe-off practice sheets. (They're coated so you can use them with a wipe-off marker.) My youngest is in the third grade, after all. But one of last year's Review Crew mentioned that she had used them with an eight-year-old, so I decided to give them a try along with the main program. We use the suggested little chants (things like "down, bounce up, down, bounce up") to get the feel of the letters, and we're just working through them, one per lesson. (We're a bit beyond the suggested cornmeal and shaving cream activities, but they'd be helpful with younger ones.)

This manual is the key to the whole program--especially the CD-Rom included in the back of the book (one each for Windows and Mac). The theory of the program is all in the manual; but the worksheets--a great variety of them, some of them customizable--are on the CD-Rom, and we've been combining those with the large Beginners sheets. There are also brief videos of students' hands--both right and left handed--writing, holding pencils, etc., along with comments about what they're doing correctly and what could be improved. The book itself contains lots of ideas and examples for continuing handwriting practice, which will probably make more sense once you've gotten started. You can also order a download of the font itself, which would allow you to make your own worksheets.
So although you'd have to buy both the Beginners and the main package to get this combination, I think it's a good option if you have a mid-elementary-age child AND you need a kickstart to begin teaching with the program. Younger children would probably be fine with just the big sheets--you do get a helpful little teacher's guide with them, and I've been using that more than I have the main book.


We also received the "adult" or "remedial" package, Fix It Write. The Apprentice had been asking me if I could find her something that would help her write her high school notes faster and clearer, and this sounded like a good possibility. Between end-of-semester exams and everything else lately, she hasn't had much time to do more than look through the package; I think I'm going to have to write a separate review for that one. She did comment that she also would have liked to see more reproducible pages instead of instructions to draw lines so-far-apart on paper and then practice patterns on those. I told her that there were probably some sheets she could print out from the CD-Rom that would make it easier--but again, this is going to have to wait until chemistry and physics are done. UPDATE: there's a special Fix It Write site with sample pages and some interesting animation.
The price of all this: BFH Fluent Handwriting Manual with CD-ROM (the main package) is US$65.95. Beginners' Handwriting with Teacher's Guide (the booklet I mentioned) is $29.95. An extra set of large sheets, sold only with the purchase of a complete Beginner's set, is $20.00. (One comment--I don't understand the reasoning behind that. If our sheets were worn out after one child and I wanted to buy another set a couple of years down the road, why couldn't I buy just the sheets?) Barchowsky Exemplar Fonts (Download) are $25.00. Fix It... Write (the adult program) is $19.95.
Final Take: I'm happy we got to try this--this seems to be the year of improving our spelling, improving our handwriting. I wish Crayons would have had the chance to start it a couple of years ago, but since she is still only partway through learning the "regular" cursive letters, I don't think she'll have a problem trying to relearn some of them--and in fact, the hard ones are the ones that Barchowsky simplifies (like lower-case S). I'm not sure how I feel about the price--it sounds high, but it's probably comparable to other complete programs out there.

Dewey's Disclaimer: These products were received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.

My mind, my acorn pile: Trying out Math Mammoth

The third (final) year of Miquon Math is always the hardest here--and it doesn't seem to matter exactly how old the Squirreling is. Possibly it's the year with the oddest assortment of topics, coming at an age when more typical third-grade math programs concentrate most on operations (along with some time-telling, money and measurement). As I described earlier in the year, I broke down the year's work by weeks and topics, wrote each week's work on a file card, and added notes of possible supplements. It hasn't been bad--we're on track with the cards, and the Mathemagic book is a real success--but I've still been feeling that, even with computer drill games and Calculadder work, there are still some holes in Crayons' math understanding. Not that anybody needs to panic at this age, but I get the impression from her too that math lessons are somewhat less than delightful. I wonder too if, in one sense, she really does know what she thinks she doesn't know, simply because it's not all straight in her head. I think that's what made All About Spelling a success over the past couple of months: she needed to gain some confidence but also to organize some of the knowledge she had stored up so that she could pull it out and use it. It might be that Timmy-Tiptoes part of being a Squirrel: dropping those nuts down deep through the hole in the tree, but not being sure exactly what went down there, or how you're going to get them out again later.

And besides, I know that, one way or another, we're going to be looking for another curriculum for fourth grade and up, because Miquon will be done. There are so many things out there to try now: Math-U-See, Right Start, Life of Fred, Saxon, JUMP, Mathematics Enhancement Programme--everybody has their favourites.

So when the Review Crew offered us the chance to try out one of Math Mammoth's full-curriculum workbooks, that didn't sound like a bad thing at all. We decided to go with MM's Light Blue series for third grade--starting today with an addition review.

This isn't a review yet, but there will be one when we have shaken up the acorns enough.

All About Spelling (TOS Review)

All About Spelling is my favourite so far of the review items that we've gotten as in-the-mail products (that is, not websites, e-books, or other online material). When I first checked out what the Review Crew had done last year, this program was mentioned frequently as one that got all thumbs up; so I was pleased to hear that this year's Crew was going to try it out as well. I was also amused to see a review from Ann Voskamp on the book's back cover--small world.

We haven't tried many other commercial spelling programs: we've used more "natural methods" of teaching spelling, such as copywork and dictation, reading, word games, and third grader Crayons has used online spelling activities as well. But, without trying to embarrass anybody, only one of our Squirrelings seems to be an intuitive speller. Crayons can read very hard books, but lacks confidence in spelling, which makes her sometimes reluctant to write.

Enter All About Spelling, Level One, and its accompanying Materials Packet. It's not a workbook or textbook program. What you do get: a lesson-by-lesson teacher's manual; a lot of coloured index-sized cards to pop apart (some are words, some are phonograms, some are rules to memorize); a sheet of laminated "tiles" to cut apart and stick magnets on the back of; and a few miscellaneous things like bingo chips and progress charts. Oh, and a CD-Rom of phonogram sounds. Pencil-and-paper or whiteboard work can be included as appropriate, but with the alphabet tiles it's workable even for those whose fine motor skills are weak.

If you have a large magnetic board, you can stick all the tiles-- lower-case alphabet letters and combinations of letters like CK and TH--on that and save yourself (or your Squirreling) the trouble of setting up the letters every day. I thought our old Coleco Magnetic Playboard (the kind with a chalkboard on the back) would be big enough, but it's only half as big as the recommended 2 x 3 foot surface. The fridge could have served, but the kitchen table turned out to work better for us, even though it's not magnetic. The magnets on the back of the tiles make them slide around the table better anyway than if we had left them plain.

Crayons completed the 24 "steps" (lessons) of Level One in under a month. If you have a young child just learning to read, you will of course go slower than we did. Crayons did not need to spend time working on single consonants or learn why we add "s" to make a plural. What she did find challenging was one of the first exercises: saying the sounds of words slowly (like "p-a-t" and "s-t-e-p") while pulling a plastic chip towards herself for each sound. We also needed to work on sounding out and spelling some of the vowel sounds and "consonant teams" that are taught in the first level. There are words that are covered at each level (170 in Level One), and several of them are added in each lesson, but this is not an approach that requires that every word be pre-tested, memorized, and final-tested: rather, it allows the student to spell ANY words that fit the spelling rules that have been taught.

This approach seemed to be exactly what Crayons needed this year. She enjoyed...as much as any third grader enjoys...the hands-on approach of spelling with tiles. (Sometimes I had her spell words out loud instead.) When we got to the end of each lesson, I skipped having her spell individual words on paper, but had her write the suggested phrases and short sentences instead, usually four or five a day. A younger child could do single words. She liked the humour of the phrases: "sniff and smell," "sink in quicksand," "six sad clams," "swam in jam." We had quite an interesting discussion about "rub his chin" and whether "he" might turn out to be a cat or a dog. I even learned something new myself: that there are no English words containing the letters "enk." (If you find one, let me know.)

The proof of success, for me, was that the same day we finished Level One, Crayons decided to entertain herself during Ponytails' dance class by writing a 246-word story. (I counted.) It wasn't perfectly spelled. But she asked for help with spelling only a couple of times, and it's the longest thing she's ever written (plus it was a great story). Coincidence? Maybe she's just growing up...but I will credit the month of All About Spelling she just completed with giving her renewed confidence and interest in writing.

We have just started Level Two, which we were also sent for review. This level includes eleven new phonograms and introduces more complicated words, as well as "jail words" that don't fit the spelling rules. I don't expect Crayons to take too long to get through it.

Will we continue on with the four other levels of the program?

Well, that was the point at which I went back to the website and checked the prices. The materials packet, which covers all the levels, is US$26.95. Level One is $29.95, and the other levels are $39.95. Extra student materials packets, which include the cards, bingo chips, and progress charts, are available for $19.95 apiece ($14.95 for Level One). You can also buy the CD-Rom, and the tiles separately, as well as additional items from the same publisher including a reader and a book about homophones. (I forgot to say that you can see sample lessons, and also a scope and sequence, here.)

While I was a bit floored by the generosity of the publisher in sending a hundred dollars' worth of spelling materials, I also had a few second thoughts about whether I would have purchased these materials at full price for a third grader, considering the speed at which we go through them; and whether or not I will be able to afford further levels. I do think that All About Spelling offers very good value overall (as Paddington would say), since the materials [in the first two levels; there are some write-in materials in higher levels] are all non-consumable except for the progress sheets and certificates; the laminated tiles are very sturdy, and the whole thing should last you through several children, assuming you have them. And considering how happy I am with Crayons' improved spelling, a hundred dollars for the materials and the first two levels could be thought of as money well spent. We will see how it goes with this second level, and if Crayons appears to need more of the same kind of work, I will consider getting the next one. If this "booster" is enough, she may do fine after this on her own.

For more reviews of this product, see the Review Crew Website.

Dewey's Disclaimer: This product was received free for purposes of review. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.